


Last One Standing

by Literary



Series: Before Colors Broke into Shades [63]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 15:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11649642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Literary/pseuds/Literary
Summary: She’d had enough of losing, of feeling hurt.





	Last One Standing

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt #50: "I need you to forgive me." Levihan. Given to me by AmateurMagic on Tumblr.
> 
> This is basically a quiet kind of speculative potential mid-war-with-Marley piece. Character-centric as usual.

Levi’s voice was quiet and came from her good side: “Hey.”

Hange blinked at him, a small bit of something that might have been affection pressing against her lungs. It was a conscious choice to always approach her on the right and every time he did it, she made herself consider that. The sun burned overhead, pushing sweat into her already-burning eye. She watched Levi for a moment, her expression troubled, and lifted her arm to swipe at her face, the movement bumping up her already-crooked glasses.

He didn’t say anything else—not even about the glasses. What did it matter, she supposed, if she could see out of them?

She glanced to the right, heart aching a little, almost missing how things were a long time ago. It was ridiculous how four years could feel like a lifetime, how easy it was to see that she had changed. The Hange of before hadn’t minded Levi’s names; between them, they had almost seemed intimate.

But now… Now it was just a reminder of all of the things she’d lost.

And she’d had enough of losing, of feeling hurt.

She wanted to be done with those things, wanted to cast the concept of loss aside—an impossibility considering their circumstances, but the kind of hope that had crept up on her, vines twisting around her legs almost without her realizing it. It held her fast, the desire to never lose anything again.

A dream was all that was, and a battlefield was no place for dreamers.

She gave Levi what she hoped looked like a manic grin instead of a sloppy, sad little smile. “Hey yourself,” she said, exhaustion leaking through the crack in her voice. She hated herself for that and wondered if Erwin had ever felt this way—if they’d be in this fix if Erwin was in charge instead of her. Would they be better off if she’d worked just a little harder one of the nights when she’d felt that the pull of accomplishment and understanding was right around the next corner, existing in nothing more than the turn of a page?

He stared at her, at her one eye instead of both together. She hated that. She wasn’t the same person from before but she wished most of the time that she was. She wanted her peers back—her friends, but since she couldn’t have that, she wanted to forget the feeling of Moblit using his own momentum to force her off-course just before the fateful explosion that had taken his life—and the way her eye had stung afterward, first from the injury, then from the tears she’d been unable to control, and finally from an infection that would have happily taken her along with it if she’d given it half a chance.

On rare nights, when everything was quiet and she could hear her own heartbeat, she wished she’d let it.

But that was easy to wish for and Hange had never in her life taken the easy road. Out with the eye, she’d said without hesitation. _Get it out._

“I have an idea,” came Levi’s voice. He sounded strange—not quite himself. Hange wasn’t sure what to make of it. She had changed but Levi had remained steady as long as she’d known him. She wondered if it was pathetic to find that knowledge comforting.

“An idea,” she echoed, dropping her attempt at a grin. It looked sad and small after all, she thought, noting the crow’s feet by Levi’s eyes and wondering if she had lines of her own like that. “Usually you’re not the idea guy…but I’m all ears.”

He looked away, though only for a moment. Shook his head. “Don’t concern yourself.”

The pit of her stomach hardened even as she forced her head to follow through the motions of nodding.

“This is a goddamn mess. It’s happened before. Didn’t have much of a choice then and we don’t now.”

She didn’t know much about Erwin’s death—just the basics. But he’d charged in and died along with a hundred others just to distract one man. Remembrance made her feel ill. Levi had helped with that.

 “Levi—”

“If we don’t do something we’ll lose.”

“I know.” She swallowed hard and rocked back onto her heels. She wasn’t half the fighter she’d been a handful of years ago. As it turned out, being blind in one eye made things difficult. “But—”

“There’s more to lose than just—”

It was her turn to cast aside her gaze. “Just you?” she whispered. As if he wasn’t their best soldier even after all these years… As if they hadn’t been friends more than a decade and a little more besides. As if they weren’t all the other had left anymore from slightly better days. But over the sounds of their south-side defenses being overrun, she wasn’t sure if he’d heard her.

“Hange,” was all he had to say to make her look up again. There was a set to his face that made him look ten years older and that frightened her more than she could safely admit to herself. “I need you to do something.”

She laughed, hard and sharp, and this time it sounded manic—might have looked it, too, though Levi’s expression almost turned sad instead of annoyed. “I’m not spinning tales of your heroic deeds on the battlefield,” she said, and felt crazy. Her words spilled from her mouth like potato soup. “Or—or whatever it is you’re thinking.”

“Hange.”

She stilled, blinking hard with her one eye as if it would make up for the other not working. At least she only had to keep the tears out of one of them, she supposed.

“What is it, then?” she asked, her voice small. Her stomach ached and her limbs felt strange, as if she were almost out of time. She couldn’t close her ears to the sounds of the less-fortunate in the distance and glanced southward. “Levi, what is it? I really need to—”

“I’ll go,” he said as if it were the obvious solution to a problem she’d labored over half her life. “I can help.”

Nobody could help them, Hange thought. They were dead and they still had to try to fight because that’s what war was all about: heroically holding the line. She wanted to weep. Had Erwin dealt with feeling like this, too? Like he’d failed somehow? They should have been able to hold out longer. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

“I—”

“I’ll go,” he said again, his voice sharp. “I have to.”

She thought of Erwin, imagined him charging with a hundred terrified men behind him as he urged them onward, the hooves of their horses slamming against the ground like an awful heartbeat. A distraction for Levi, their only chance at victory.

Except this time it would be Levi riding in as the distraction. Alone. And this time, he wouldn’t come back.

She swallowed what might have been the beginnings of a sob and nodded slowly. “I’ll help…in any way I can. You know that.”

Levi never smiled, not really, not with his mouth. But the lines in his forehead lifted momentarily and she knew he was grateful for her understanding. He returned her nod, the wrinkles returning all at once and she couldn’t remember what he’d looked like just a moment ago without them.

“What do you need me to do?” she asked.

He hefted his blades, shot his grappling hook into the nearest south-facing building, and said, quietly: “I need you to forgive me.”

As if there were anything to forgive. As if she didn’t understand why he was doing it. As if they had a choice.

But he wanted it, her forgiveness. He knew how it would hurt her to be the last one left, how alone she would feel even if somehow she managed to win the fight for humanity. That he thought of her and wanted his conscience clear made her smile.

It was soft and a little sad, but she angled her own gear at the opposite wall and shot a hook in it, too.

“I do,” she said, the words wet with feeling.

And then he was gone, and a moment later, after she’d taken the time to wipe more sweat, or perhaps tears, out of her eye, she was, too.


End file.
